If you know someone who’s stressed out and hates being asked “Are you thinking about your career?” Send this to them.
THEORY
The Reality Of Success After UVA
Often at UVA, it feels like success depends on the right major, the right clubs, and the best internships.
After speaking with 50+ successful alumni, I can tell you that’s far from the truth.
What actually happens is you…
Land a finance internship helping your neighbor build a basketball hoop (Adam Cohn, CFO @ CNN)
Meet your co-founder after pretending to be a Comm student sneaking into a talk years earlier (Sam Spelsberg, Founder @ Delphi AI)
Get laid off a month into the internship, then end up full time at Meta (Jared Tewodros, SWE @ Meta)
Most people I’ve talked to have a story like that. A lucky shot, a setback, and a willingness to lean on others.
The problem is you rarely see those stories. Instead, you see polished LinkedIn posts that make careers look linear and planned out. And when your own path doesn’t look like that, it creates unnecessary stress.
Hoo You Know exists to surface the paths you don’t see. Not to give you a formula for success, but to show you there isn’t one.
If you read each week, you’ll see the highs, the lows, and the lessons learned of successful UVA alumni across every industry.
You’ll understand how messy and unpredictable careers really are, and once that sets in, you can focus on what actually matters: being curious and reaching out.
If you can master those two, the rest tends to work itself out.
CLOSING TIME
What To Do Next
Reading is great — but putting yourself out there, meeting new people, and finding opportunities is what this is all about.
4 things to do right now:
Find a UVA alum and send them a cold message.
Follow up in a week if they don’t respond.
Prepare for the meeting, and talk to them
Explore a new industry:
Want us to cover a new industry? Reply to this email and let us know which one.
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